"Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale"—Rudolf Virchow

August 20, 2019

Gombe, so far ... and yet so close

Thanks to Jason Stearns and @GeopoliticalJD for alerting me to this post. Via the Congo Research Group, a long article on the Kinshasa enclave where the politicians congregate: Gombe, so far ... and yet so close. Excerpt from the Google translation:

A few thousand kilometers from Kinshasa, the tension is also at its height. This time, the concern is not the formation of the government, nor the organizers of the institutions but rather the mown lives, a hungry population, the officials on strike.

Sometimes images worthy of horror movies swarm social networks. In Bunia, far from the fascinating debates of the prestigious salons of Gombe, an angry crowd is unleashed in the streets after the last killings, holding in hand a head, that of a decapitated girl.

In Beni, Mangina or Oicha a few kilometers to the south, the inhabitants do not know what to fear the most: the Ebola virus disease which has already made more than 1866 victims for over a year, or the mysterious machete killers who have terrorized the population for five years?

The promises of the new president to move his headquarters in the region, to replace military units or more generally to pacify the country, are slow to materialize. In Kinshasa, we prefer to relativize: reacting on a foreign radio about the massacres in Bunia, the Minister of the Interior does not hesitate to denounce a "montage". Gombe is very far, it feels so good! For some, it feels so good.

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Gombe, so far ... and yet so close

Thanks to Jason Stearns and @GeopoliticalJD for alerting me to this post. Via the Congo Research Group, a long article on the Kinshasa enclave where the politicians congregate: Gombe, so far ... and yet so close. Excerpt from the Google translation:

A few thousand kilometers from Kinshasa, the tension is also at its height. This time, the concern is not the formation of the government, nor the organizers of the institutions but rather the mown lives, a hungry population, the officials on strike.

Sometimes images worthy of horror movies swarm social networks. In Bunia, far from the fascinating debates of the prestigious salons of Gombe, an angry crowd is unleashed in the streets after the last killings, holding in hand a head, that of a decapitated girl.

In Beni, Mangina or Oicha a few kilometers to the south, the inhabitants do not know what to fear the most: the Ebola virus disease which has already made more than 1866 victims for over a year, or the mysterious machete killers who have terrorized the population for five years?

The promises of the new president to move his headquarters in the region, to replace military units or more generally to pacify the country, are slow to materialize. In Kinshasa, we prefer to relativize: reacting on a foreign radio about the massacres in Bunia, the Minister of the Interior does not hesitate to denounce a "montage". Gombe is very far, it feels so good! For some, it feels so good.